CID CORMAN ~ THE NEXT
ONE THOUSAND YEARS

for
Shizumi Corman

A friend of mine, a
close associate of Cid Corman, and I were talking the other day
about how it just may take another one thousand years, or maybe
a thousand more - what's another thousand years in poetry? -
for Cid Corman to come back around and be seen for what he was.
I don't worry about the young poets. The young poets were always
drawn to Cid, and they will be forever more. It's that liberty
thing about Cid, and the young eat it like fruit from a tree.
The problem is all of us just have to die off - get rid of the
straggle-toothed old blood venom that festers like a virus in
the professional poetry camps. Cid disliked camps, even though
he couldn't help but tribe one of his own through his magazine
and press Origin. It just happens.

Cid was the first,
or one of the first, to publish extensively Louis Zukofsky, William
Bronk, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and the
list is just endless with today's poets he found, or those who
went to find him either in the nest of his Boston restaurant
parlor, or at the Kyoto headwaters. Cid's essence was that he
spanned generations and poetries unlike anyone in postWW2 world
literature: as publisher of Origin netting poetry no matter where
it was, into his own translations sweeping old and new Europe,
through the vastness that is Asia, and then returning to his
homeland budding new generations of poets, translators, editors,
readers who virtually bowed to him.

Cid's acclaim for Lorine
Niedecker is like a one-man Jesse Fuller band.

His allegiance to the
tiniest lost thread of a poet is legendary. How many saplings
in the forest did he personally slog out to after a storm and
patiently tie back up? Try all of them. Did he infuriate people?
Yes, and most missed out how that was his greatest gift. He told
the truth. Cid expected the same truth to be returned to him.
When in his darkest moments he shared with me - somehow humbled
and a little delirious at once - that the Nobel Prize committee
should be calling him soon; after he championed down to a boxer's
worn mouth guard legions of poets work - now it was his turn.
I advised Cid that he best stop sitting by the phone. There were
more poems to write!

Cid had the genius
to be able to speak to anyone. He wrote JFK a very serious letter,
and I watched him once upon a time take that same seriousness
and speak to a parrot on a post in a Central Park zoo. As a basic
out-of-shape desk servant who liked to walk his pathways, there
are no poets that quite understood the wilderness like Cid Corman.
He had a grip on Gary Snyder, Ted Enslin and other earthly ones
long before anyone. His poems can be plunked down into any setting
from New Formalism to Language Poets; and by the way, Hallmark
Cards missed a golden opportunity with Cid. Go ahead and laugh!
But just imagine the possibilities.

Like John Coltrane
at the moment he split from Miles Davis in the early 60s leaving
jazz for something altogether spiritual, everlasting, not of
this earth and will be heard forever and ever and ever. No, Cid
isn't Coltrane. That's only the first layer. Cid is John Gilmore
- the scintillating horn player deep behind the leaves Coltrane
bushwhacked into and learned some things from. Cid Corman did
everything his more famous brethren accomplished, and thensome
- he stayed in the unknown.

I believe it's time
to begin an anthology for Cid. Something I will edit and keep
ongoing until kingdom come. We will start off with Cid's own
work from The Famous Blue Aerogrammes, and then oar the
Longhouse backwaters for many other poets from our pages and
walks of life over the last 35 years - given to us as gifts,
meteoric, meant to share. Let the sharing begin.

I
have had this little book in mind and in the making for some
years now. Cid and I often talked about it and it had his blessings,
and in some ways it may be the perfect gift to be given now with
his passing. This is Cid at his ever best, informally presenting
his poems typed outside on mail aerogrammes to all his friends
and correspondence - no matter how long he had known you - complete
strangers became friendship as any friend. I imagine the post
office might have had one reader in its ranks between Kyoto &
Vermont. The poems suddenly appeared on the aerogrammes at the
start of the '90s and continued right up to his last letter to
me at the end of December 2003. All others who had letters from
Cid experienced similar poems-as-gift. He mined poems from his
already published books, new work, poems that were coming to
him as he wrote a letter to a particular friend; even other poets'
poems. Everything was game. I know he drew poems to me right
out of my letters or the subject of those letters - so a poem
to my young son Carson, another about Ted Enslin, laying stone
in my work as a builder - the matter at the moment. Few poets
reached the very moment like Cid. He meant poetry to be the absolute
headache for any archivist or scholar of the future: the insistence
on poetry being of the now. What's the point, afterwards? Cid
seems to be saying to us all. I've selected over fifteen years
of the poems-on-aerogrammes period and of course before then,
poetry was always Cid's letters. Mail-call. One more reason why
we miss him every day. ~B o b A r n o l d, 2004

All in good time what shall we add
except that it comes without a bidding
crisis hardly matters pnor the accents
crusis/anacrusis A Bach chorale
as good example he would have said
Gottes Zeit ist die alle best
and did so many times in
various ways
as the night blooming cereus at dusk
in dawn surrounded by its wreckage
its perfume gone not
lost it was
a good time for it that is all.

2nd

In heat of the measure
I have swallowed fire
naught but the flame to leave
the place of burning some
would have called it Gehenna
place to purify that which is unclean
turn cold again no measure left
nor bone in ash remaining
yet from the heat remembrance
what is as what is not
on verge of being was and is

3rd

Old age not winter reaches
something
of a clarity of a voice to say what reaches
many keys the modulations one
or two
still left a surety not
in cadence quite
the motion in reverse not a mirror
much to negate yet to repeat a melody
one not known was always known remains
a ground where on to build no haste
the signature of many times that left us
what are few to come once more and so
the last of it a wild surprise.

4th

Remembering the maze of sound how
one moves within it lost not
troubled
losing is a mere reflection of the light
how one to such another signpost wavering
the light is dim uncertain carried
in a lamp
is midway of the night no entrance more
entreaty to begin again what has been learned
a great unlearning spelled in tablature
as stretti sounding lead us on wherever
the form is of itself led on a
rising falls
one moves and moves again is forever lost.

5th

Und mich verlassen cry
of the ungrateful
unknowing what was is
around a sounding
a tuning offer grass and leaves the
supple
and the brittle of a tone intoned hollow
or of registers above the glass to cut
the knife is air alone verlassen ist geburt
bright pain bright joy in brightness leaves
a timbre mich verlassen not
ungrateful
read in register dun wood to grass blade
its gloss the sheen of water let it be
so as magic intercedes with logic.

6th

Magic not a memory one
does not
remembering is other magic in itself
is and it is not clap
of water rising
cup of water wave of one upon another
(in the dark light of one and then the
other)
what do we know? why do we want to know
it?
magic what is except
the obvious
whereon theres some of it let it
stand
one reads the notes and understands them
clap of sound of water what
is given
all a sounding Die
Alle Best Zeit
Play
on.

Running
home for lunch
crossing the little bridge
beyond Frank Howe's
visualizing, on the rise,
Mom's eyes at the window
jog
facing northeast along the barn door 
she's be looking under
the double joint
between top and bottom sashes

Sick headaches kept her
from gathering
of the Forthnightly Club
at the Library

d

Practice for Mel
from the time I was five
catching without a mitt
chasing wild pitches
down the dirt road
to the culvert
and expected, on the way
back,
to throw out my arm

e

into a clearing
in blackberry country
looks back, whistles,
strips and sprawls on a ledge
soaking sunstrength,
cannot control
the freshening
calls his dog
reaches under
both streaming,
dog, hind legs spread, squirting
on leaves
boy watching
watched by the sun
hides among trees,
they run in a team through the woods

f

after school
under a cornshock
funnels his hand
lingers
Mom
calling dinner
brothers at table

FOLK
FRAGMENTS

What's
yer name?
Pudd'n
tane

What's yer natur?
Pudd'n
tater

b

My mother has a Japanese fan
this is the way it opens
this is the way it fans

c

I'm in the millpond
I can't swim
how kin I git out agin?
You git out
as you got in
I got in and
out agin

d

The cat couldn't kit
the pup couldn't pup
the Old Man couldn't
git his rhubarb up

Reading Inscriptions: 1944-1956 I often
feel
a kinship between us in the short poem. And if
you are my brother-in-poetry then we have Chinese
and Japanese brothers. But I have a a great deal of
practicing to do - of quiet insight - before I can
enter such a good family.

I like best if I can narrow down "The
Indian
of Peru, I think", "One of my sentinels, a tree"
and "Hardly a breath of wind" with "the little
purposes are lost", the color of those abstract
words relating to the falling leaves. Among the
longer poems I felt the roll of "From Jehuda Halevi's
Songs to Zion."

Hard to write and then get it printed. I try
to
along with scrubbing floors in a hospital. Every
now and again, tho, there's a chink where a poem
comes thru. Altogether life is not really too hard -
I gather this what you say too.

Mrs. Carlson's book will have a few of mine
of
which I am enclosing two.

Thank you for your book, "this added kindness."

Yours
and
my best holiday wishes

Lorine
Niedecker

First appeared for Autumnal Equinox 1998
Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers

This
letter has been transcribed line for line from theholograph text.  Cid Corman, Executor of the Lorine
Niedecker Estate

much
sky
many
tree clouds
many
cloud clouds
much lagoon much
water
much
alone
alone how much
enough

9/IX/87 Burano

ZEITSCHRIFT
FUR ALLES N. 10
TODAYS VERSION OF IT
for Dieter Roth

(what is this noise?
(lets call it music
(sometimes I say to myself
do I have a name for the thing?
(have I seen that movie
and where and when and what
was it called?
(the beginning was the end
(when I answered the telephone
I knew right away that she had
the wrong number
(god lives in a fridge
handing out words of wisdom
(beware of German philosophy
I say to those girls that take over
my dreams in Oklahoma

24-24/IX/87

PHONE
CALL TO REIDAR EKNER

We are on E4 250 km south of
Stockholm what should we do?
ANSWER: Drive carefully.

27/XI/87

THALIA
VERBATIM

I tend to simplify everything: if
he likes to pour his
tea in the pinball machine
why worry?

25/XII/87

it
isnt at all
the same thing
when its almost
but not exactly
the same thing

15/VI/88

monte generoso
6000 feet above the lake
its cliffs buddha faces
its trees dakini hair
in sky blue lights the way
to the white clouds
repeat towers on rocky heads
nothing but emptiness
is what they say

I went down
to the beach
in winter. Made phone calls
from a booth twisting dial holes
on a jerk - marriage/divorces needing
legal contract, signed now,
with the settlement. Cars passing
attract eyes like animal
movement - too sealed in
for animals: people strapped in
indistinguishable from headrests
upright to safety belts
on their seats. But people

are all around
here, crouch down finding
hideouts in the wind or at
shelter sheds from its access off
the harbour. Cars don't

cruise in
it - chassis
too heavy, move rudderless through
vacuum pockets, at radials against
the curve. Ocean troughs

swell themselves
up out
further onto crests, sharpen
where swollen, foams chopped off
at flurries. Whistlings
along telegraph wires, hummings rolled
tumbling out of reach. Over

cut lawns
to amusement
park. Opening time
of Dodgem cars under poles, sparks
at electric net. Bump themselves
through openings, squeezed out
from in traffic, jam-shocked
onto buffers. Attendant slews
apart to clear, Pursuit rumble
and ram-jarred into flinch-laughs, swivelled
back-jerked against arms askew
on their seats.

WORK
AT THE SAWMILL AND AFTER

Backed logs
in
through shed
from area adjacent to where they'd been
felled, trunks shoved off
from open end of gable onto
saw to be split up

along lengths
into half-moon
cross-sections, dense down onto
depths of logs from cutting edge,
in sounds of tin and wood vibrating
corrugated iron roof's rust
on rafter, Workmen -

'subcontractors'?
- dark singlets,
felt hats, brims dinged down
on S bends, croens knuckled-in
to split open at corners
of the dinge, bodies thick, im-
mune to paid we would see it
as crabs, arms trunks sur-
prised if nicked not flesh feeling
an agony. Their grubbiness

is our 'structure
or design'
though. I turn
on sunset unrecorded had
I had myself
no use for it - black storm
but horizon opening turquoise
to a slash. As un-
affected by a record
as I would be later, setting
paper alight from a match, puffing
flame up on handbellows used
so bark and kindling near it could
catch fire.
I
head west

to dusk at
hill wood's
under-ridge, inadvertently
circling the town and missing the local
pub. Backtracked
in mulch of autumn leaves, crispness
through damp. The town

has not got
much but has got it
now. Cold smorgasbord - add
salad, tinned bean mix, buttered
roll on a plate to go with grilled
fish. Some money for it. Black
coffee sweet in glass of cherry
brandy - at television screen's
reflector blurring images off
to the corners on side view. Turn
to thump cannon-thud on clicks
as the locals play pool.
Climb

up wood staircase.
Untuck stiff
sheets. Work the creaking old
bed springs. Join closing time

in the house
sounds under sleep.

AFTER
THE EQUINOX

The
bells full
of rain through the air above
the cathedral. Lack of
solidity in the time past and
of now. I walk the sparse

grass to
mud boundary by
the playing fields onto whatever times
there are, into the temporariness
of the past, slither, no
foothold. And call the days

to go out
to
the world
this time dressed as a
japanese printmaker,
not the eye of
epicanthus, but
yes,
perspective
as that of an island:
out, out into a world,
to find it earth! and
more simple, complex
than it seemed:
reducible
to a few lines with
shadings, the wood
to its grain
rather than to the
external form.
what
part of earth are you!
and after that, to
go out,
perhaps dressed as a
haida shaman,
finding
it
all ocean! and
strewn with cowry: lines
across sand.
once,
the land bridged.
let it
be
an earth color:
orange of hematite or
dark as vital loam
where rivers are,
or
blue
of roots from
the parched mesas,
saved
distillate of rain
toward one hand.
but always
as
this rug:
woven
of wool from a real sheep,
alive, shorn with shears
and dyed
perhaps
with berries
until brilliant, or
left
so:
the soft natural.
but always
fashioned
with
eyes, with hands,
as friends faces, worn or
young: with the
nature of it
evident,
brought
out.

It is not for me to say whether
the hoarse, strident, searching, verse that marks today is merely
a young cynicism or an old dejection. There is a music in older
voices that cling to men's minds, while now there is a wild order,
a chaos of personal images that are lost to the listening reader.
There is a suddenness: something spasmodic and brief about our
poetry: the print of our time.

Still, there is room for music:
poetry that fills with song and meaning, that we have heard before.
We may use a new idiom, a new tongue, and new mannerisms, but
a poem should still sing and live.

~ Cid
Corman, from the preface to his first book Subluna: twelve
poems written during 1943-44 when the poet was just turning twenty
years old.

JÁNOS PILINSZKYTranslated by
Cid Corman

VEIL

There is no sun.
There is no moon.
And no childhood.
And above all no land, no mother-land.

There is no coffin and
no homeland.
No cradle and no bed made,
death settled under our heads.

One who lives is on a pin
point,
and our peace itself is nothing
but a busted worthless wing,
a bride's veil, off or not,
lost upon a nail.

first published
as a broadside by Longhouse February 1976 / newly published 2006.
Please inquire as to availabilitypoetry@sover.net

PHILIPPE DENIS

Selections
from Nugae

1.

I was present this morning when
a
blossoming tree sweetly escaped.

For what refusal or acquiescence
was the head of the tree nodding
over my page?

3.

However the wind diminish us,
re-
duces us to a thread, to learn in
our deserts, to learn to ride a
grain of sand.

I am banged up against the horizon.

6.

Oneself in a thousand flashes
bursting
the thousand flashes.

To pass in one's life at a gust
of wind
then awaken ahead of oneself a point. The
swiftness of such a task lets this sky
be neglected!

8.

The word snow used wildly.
I feel the difficulty of it.

Those mornings when we toss about
on one wing!

9.

To be enchantingly alone. But
does
that make any sense?

What we are, we are, most of
the time,
thanks to what hasnt completely occurred.

12.

There are pages which more than
all
others express us. Some - witness to
our fatigues - will remain blank;
others - witness to our laziness - will
be those where, by negligence, we
shall have triumphed.

Lorine, Lorine, Lorine...
Wisconsin's
word-heroine
you sang of flood
&
pump-valves
you poked through skunk-cabbage
Spring, never denying bitter
edges & cold iron
of empty nights
you also sang of Darwin
& everyman's need to follow
his life through
to the Source
yet your neighbors thought you
only the woman who washed
hospital floors
& they did see one who walked
primly in her black cloth
coat
as if oblivious to the driving
snowflake hordes.

O under pressure
even water thickens
into quartz
thunder,

Lorine, Lorine, Lorine...
I am dazzled
by your

example.

~

for
CID

this poem is like the rosebranch's
shaking
after
the bird has flown

~

IMAGINE

Townies call me Indian, Jew, Buddha-ist,
No red rock jewel mountain stronghold here.
That's my house...the one snow
is still falling on
though legally it's Spring.
Busted window admits it & warped doorframe
opens the door to wind during night,
an invitation I cannot refuse to attend to.
Rednecks drive up in second gear, whining, on their
6-packs, rifles hung upside down on racks
up rear window of their Dodge RAM. Knock loudly
on the door, it opens, & ask me do I have any
cigarettes to sell. Shuffling inside their
plaids like shy bears.
Midnight.
A change from chanting sutras, to be sure.
I speak very plainly because my terror is cautious.
We all know what really
inside a woman moves for pleasure. I send my
trembling to a moon not visible. A woman must learn
to pull against gravity without obstructing
the flow of her own nature, of space
in which all
things
have equal
dominion.
I know their faces, have watched them lurch
at the back of town meeting. I know what
they signify.
But this pain we share I would not.
We want some of your poetry, one from the truck calls.
I say Imagine
and shut the door.